McDonough District Hospital is participating in a National Fall Prevention Program

McDonough District Hospital is taking on an evidence-based quality improvement project to prevent falls in an effort to provide the highest quality care to our patients.

MDH is one of only 10 hospitals across the country selected to participate in a 2-year Fall Prevention Program sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The MDH Fall Prevention Implementation Team is a multi-disciplinary team, led by Lora Vogler, Clinical Care Coordinator for Acute Care at MDH. This Team has been busy working with AHRQ’s Quality Improvement Specialists to assess our current policies and procedures in fall prevention, determine what needs improvement, and develop an action plan of evidence-based strategies for implementing a tailored fall prevention program for our hospital.

Over the next 10 months, MDH will be working with the Quality Improvement Specialists and leading national experts to implement our fall prevention initiative. During the project’s second year we will develop sustainment strategies to ensure the initiative’s long term success in preventing patient falls in our hospital.

Each year patient falls are a leading cause of hospital-acquired conditions across the country. AHRQ's mission is to produce evidence to make health care safer, higher quality, more accessible, equitable and affordable, and to work within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and with other partners to make sure that the evidence is understood and used.

To learn more about McDonough District Hospital’s participation in this program, please contact Ashley Frederick, Clinical Quality Improvement Coordinator at (309) 833-4101, ext. 13501.